When I was asked to write an article for this issue about teaching kids with autism, I thought, who better to tell that tale than me? I grew up with undiagnosed autism in the 1960s, so I have a first-person understanding of what it’s like. I’ve also raised a child with Asperger syndrome, so I’ve seen autism from the parent’s point of view. I jumped at the chance to offer my ideas in the hope that tomorrow’s teachers may have more success than the ones who tried to educate me and my son.
A Special Kind of Teacher
The first step toward connecting and succeeding with kids with autism is to accept that we are different, not “difficult.” Frankly, if you cannot get past this hurdle, one or the other of us needs to be in a different school. It is a rare autistic child who sets his mind on being difficult. However, if you are neurotypical, every autistic person sees the world very differently from you. That neurological difference may make it harder to teach us, but it’s the situation that’s challenging, not the person.
Not everyone can accept that. Although both my son and I attended “progressive” schools, most of our teachers were not supportive. In my case, they had some excuse because Asperger syndrome was not recognized when I was in school. With my son (who is now 22), the situation should have been different. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. Rather than embrace or accept his difference, the school fought tooth and nail to resist any sort of education accommodation.
They told me he was lazy and implied he just wasn’t smart. Like many parents, I simply gave up on school because we couldn’t afford private education and it took too much energy to fight these educators’ smiling, steadfast, deliberate obstructionism.
Today, I understand that some people just are not accepting of folks who are different. Any parent who has fought with a school over a child’s special needs has experienced this lack of acceptance firsthand. If this fact surprises you, I invite you to take a tour of the various special needs parenting forums on the Internet. The rage parents express toward schools is palpable. If those forums are any indication, the special education system in the United States is not working to many parents’ satisfaction.
Autistic kids say and do some pretty peculiar things, and it takes an exceptional teacher to roll with our twists and turns and keep things moving with a smile and a bounce. If you’re not one of those people, it’s OK! Your skills are surely needed elsewhere in the world of education. If I’ve learned one thing in my 50-some years, it is this: Don’t try to be something you are not.
Begin with Understanding
I know all too well how challenging educating autistic kids can be. Teachers ask us questions, and we ignore them. They spell out our assignment, and we do something totally different. When the time comes for class discussions, our questions have nothing to do with the topic at hand. It’s enough to drive anyone crazy—even me, a fellow autistic person!
The thing is, as strange as our responses may seem to others, they often make perfect sense to us. Kids with autism will often tend to get drawn into minutiae, losing sight of the original task.
For example, in junior high school, I was supposed to write a report on Panama. Being a geek, I became fascinated by the canal and its locks, which are a great triumph of engineering. I discovered that the tallest gates, at Miraflores, are 65 feet wide and 82 feet tall, and weigh more than 700 tons each. Yet the gates are so well mounted and balanced that two electric motors are able to swing them open and shut.
Naturally, I wrote my report about the lock gates because it took two pages to tell their story and anyone could see they were the most interesting thing about Panama. My teacher disagreed: “This is a report on gates, and I asked for a report on Panama.” Although I felt that I had the best paper in the class, I got an F—and I had no idea why.
Autism is a communication disorder. Researchers say that 60–80 percent of the content in any conversation is expressed nonverbally. Those messages include most of the emotion and a fair part of the logical directions as well. People with autism may be oblivious to some or even all of that unspoken material. Sometimes we miss so much, and seem to ignore you so completely, that you think we’re deaf. But our ears work, just not the way you expect them to.
Because we have a hard time reading nonverbal messages from other people, we often can’t tell if they are happy, sad, or even angry. Disabling as that can be for us, it can also be hurtful to others. If you approach me feeling sad and I continue playing a video game with seeming indifference, you might understandably be upset. Yet we don’t mean to ignore you; we are just oblivious to your state of mind.
Friendship is a great mystery to many of us. I recall being on the playground as a small child, hearing teachers say, “Just leave John alone. He prefers to be by himself.” Nothing could have been more wrong. I wanted friends more than anything; I just didn’t know how to make them. I played next to the same kid in the sandbox every day for three months. I thought of him as my friend, even though we never had a conversation. However, he didn’t see me the same way, and hearing him say that I wasn’t his friend hurt me deeply.
People with autism often have challenges with spoken words, written words, or both. Just as we can hear but not understand, we can read without comprehending. When it comes to language, we may be delayed when we have trouble making sense of words. However, once we figure them out, or sort out our minds, we are often quick studies. The secret lies in helping us find the keys to unlock the riddles of written and spoken language.
That’s what happened with my son. At age 7, he could barely read; five years later, he read at a post college level. It was Harry Potter that precipitated that change. My son wanted so much to read that huge, daunting book that he stared and concentrated, and some switch flipped in his mind. At the beginning of summer vacation, he had an unread book and plenty of time. By the end, he’d mastered every book in the Harry Potter series. That fall, we sent him to an intensive tutoring center to solidify his gains. He never had a reading problem again.
One thing you and your students can take hope from is this: Autism is a condition that gets better with age. The older we get, the more strategies we learn to minimize our disabilities, and the better we can blend in.
Six Rules for Helping
As a teacher, you can play a big part in helping your students discover themselves and learn those all important adaptations. I’ve assembled a few rules that may help. When you consider how to apply these rules, however, remember that every autistic kid is different. If you have five kids in a class with autism diagnoses, they may well have five totally different sets of challenges and gifts. Those differences complicate the task of teaching because the things that succeed with one kid may fall flat for another.
Rule 1: Tell students exactly what you want, and say exactly what you mean.
Our autism makes it hard for us to understand things that seem self-evident to you. For example, you might point to one side of the room, and every other kid gets the message and goes and sits over there. We don’t understand nonverbal cues, so we’re left standing in the middle of the room, alone and scared because all the kids went somewhere else and we don’t know why.
When giving directions, first make sure you have our attention. Then,
speak slowly and logically. If you use
body language, combine it with words.
“Go stand over there, by Marcie’s desk,”
as you point to the right, is very clear
and understandable.
We have great difficulty discerning
sarcasm, and witty turns of phrase are
often lost on us. Comedy often goes
right over our heads. Don’t say, “That’s
great” unless you mean it. Kids with
autism will not understand why those
words convey praise one moment and
sarcastic criticism the next.
Rule 2: Be consistent and predictable.
Remember that we have great difficulty understanding social dynamics.
Therefore, we feel most comfortable and
safe when things happen in a smooth,
predictable way so that we can anticipate the flow of events. Most kids like
variety, especially in school, where it
breaks up boredom. Not us! We want to
know that art class will always happen
at 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday or that we
will always sit in a certain spot in the
lunchroom at 12:15.
You comfort a kid with autism the
same way you make friends with a
skittish pet. Move slowly, speak kindly
and gently, and don’t do anything
unpredictable. (Actually, that strategy
works with most kids, but it’s particularly effective for us.)
Rule 3: Be flexible in your conversational responses.
When a kid says something totally off
the wall, follow his lead. Sometimes our
responses seem disconnected because
our mind really is somewhere else.
Other times, we say unexpected things
because we see the world differently.
In a typical conversation, you might
say, “I went to a really good movie
last night” and expect me to ask about
the actors or the story. But if movies
are not on my mind, I might answer
with a monologue about my current
science project. This usually leads to
failed interactions with other kids, who
ridicule us when we don’t follow their
social lead. When they laugh or turn
away, we’re sad and confused.
Adults, however, usually have the
mental agility to follow our unexpected
responses. Adults can stay connected,
and that can mean a great deal. But even
more important, adults can help us
learn how to give appropriate responses
in different social settings and can
explain why we need to do so.
Rule 4: Expect good manners.
All too often, I visit schools where the
kids in special ed are bouncing off the
walls, a pack of ill behaved beasts.
When I ask why, the teachers tell me the
kids have autism, as if that excuses their behavior. Sure, autism makes it hard to
act the way others expect. Sure, we say
and do inappropriate things. We also
pay a high price for those behaviors—
people call us names, make fun of us,
and leave us isolated and alone.
That hurts. We don’t want to be
rejected. No one does.
The best way to avoid being rejected
is to stop acting weird. You will never
get into trouble by keeping your mouth
shut, nor will you ever be criticized
for saying please or thank you. The
idea that kids with autism can’t learn
manners is ridiculous. The more polite
your students are, the more successful
they will be.
Rule 5: Pay attention to sensory issues.
Years ago, observers assumed that
people with autism were essentially deaf
and blind, not sensing the world around
us much at all. “He’s in his own world,”
was a popular refrain.
Recent scientific studies have shown
how wrong that idea is. Often, autistic
people have sharply heightened senses
compared with their neurotypical peers.
We may have the ability to distinguish
individual cars from the roar of the
freeway. We might see a million shades
of color where others see a red wall.
At the same time, we may not have the
ability to communicate that exceptional
sensitivity; indeed, we may just assume
it’s ordinary.
Sometimes our sensory sensitivities
are a gift. An ability to see into music
might help one of us to become a
successful recording engineer or symphony conductor. It was autism that
gave me the intense focus to unravel
music and create unique tools to shape and process it. That led to success in my
first career, when I worked as a sound
engineer for KISS and many other
big bands of the 1970s. But this overpowering stream of sensory data can
be overwhelming for some; what seems
like a gift one moment can become a
crushing disability the next.
Then there is the flip side—sensory
oblivion. Even if we have exceptional
hearing, we may concentrate so deeply
that we unconsciously “turn off” our
ears. We may stand right in front of a
flashing red light, and not even notice
it’s there. Hard to believe, I know, but
I’ve done it myself.
Rule 6: Be sensitive to our state of mind, even if we seem oblivious to yours.
You may be relaxed and cheerful; at
peace with the world. Sadly, few autistic
people share that feeling, especially in
school.
When autistic kids are asked to describe their feelings, the two most
common emotions are anxiety and fear.
Neurotypical people send one another
nonverbal signals for reassurance.
Autistic people, who don’t receive the
unspoken messages, may live in a state
of perpetual anxiety as we struggle to
follow an ever-shifting world where any
new person may be a threat. No wonder
that when I watch kids with autism in
school, so many of them have the “wary
animal” look I remember from my own
childhood.
It’s important to remember that an
inability to read other people is one
of the key elements of an autism diagnosis, but we may hide that weakness
very well. Adults often look at us
and say, “He’s so serious,” when in
fact we are roiling with emotion. The
knowledge that we can’t see what is
obvious to others is often humiliating,
so you should approach this area with
sensitivity.
Beacons of Hope
With all these challenges, it’s easy to
see how teachers get discouraged. Just
remember that no one saw the promise
in me when I was little. You have no
idea which of your misfit kids will grow
up to be the next superstar scientist, literary genius, or software designer.
Autism has always been with us. Its
challenges shape us as a society and as
individuals. Its gifts bring us the technologies and creative works that set us
apart. Your job is to help your students
discover those gifts, while minimizing
the pain of disability and helping them
find their way.
Copyright © 2012 John Elder Robison
